Lecture
25: The Yugoslav Civil War*

[This text was written
in 1995, and reflects information available at that time, especially news reports.
Except for some interpolated notes, a concluding remark and a paragraph on the
Markale explosion, it remains as originally written.
Interested readers should seek later publications about the Bosnian conflict
based on more extensive sources. The Preface
comments on the problem of managing Web texts when "historical" information
is superceded by later knowledge.]

Lecture 24 mentioned Yugoslavia
only in passing, because its fate has been so complex and dramatic that it is
best dealt with on its own. The same influences were at work there as in the
rest of Eastern Europe in the period before, during and after 1989: that is,
events were heavily influenced by the presence or absence of real alternatives
to Communism, and the shape of those alternatives, after Communist control slipped
away. It is too soon [in 1995] to attempt valid "history" for the recent events
in Yugoslavia, but a first step toward understanding still can be a description
of the forces and trends that led to the collapse of the country into separate
states. A second step can be an analysis that separates the events of
the recent civil war into seven stages, with some indication of why
each took its own specific course.

Nationalist
forces

Lecture 24 mentioned the
revived nationalist feelings that came to the surface in Croatia in 1971. Far
from being an isolated matter, such pre-Communist survivals proved to be at
work all over the Yugoslav state, and emerged once Tito's hand was gone after
his death in 1980.

In Yugoslavia, the result
of 1989 was not the creation of progressive, Western-oriented reform regimes
but instead the revival of regimes (often led by former Communists) that were
old-fashioned in the sense that they pursued traditional nationalist agendas,
often at the cost of suppressing democratic practices and human rights.

Tensions built up slowly
before and during the year of revolution in 1989. Old issues such as federalism
had no more been resolved in socialist Yugoslavia than in royal Yugoslavia;
there were North-South tensions based on cultural and economic factors, and
the overall economy was stagnant. The death of President Tito in 1980 emphasized
the departure from leadership of a generation that had been united by the Partisan
effort in World War II, leaders who believed in the benefits of unified socialist
endeavor, and preferred it to regional rivalry and ethnic competition. By the
1980s, Communist leadership was subject to question, opening the way for alternative
political and economic forms.

Yugoslavia's awkward constitutional
arrangements were one factor leading to trouble. As a concession to critics
of the Serbian centralism of the 1930s, post-1945 Yugoslavia had six republics
(Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro) in a
federal relationship, plus two autonomous regions within Serbia (each of them
intended to safeguard minority rights, for Albanians in Kosovo and Hungarians
in Vojvodina).

In the face of small-scale
dissent and criticism in 1966, Yugoslavia reached a turning point: the regime
had to decide to what extent it would suppress or tolerate its opponents. Tito
opted for grudging toleration of dissent, but anti-regime critics failed to
adopt that same toleration for themselves, as they played up inter-ethnic suspicion
and jealousy. Efforts to accomodate federal and regional interests by changes
in the constitution also backfired. Through a series of constitutional amendments
in 1974, the six republics and two autonomous regions gained important powers
to veto legislation. Prior to his death, President Tito also instituted a system
by which the office of president was intended to rotate in turn among representatives
of each of the regions. These steps had the effect of granting powerful political
authority to regional political figures, and weakening the center of the federal
political system.

Croatian
dissent

In Croatia, the period
after 1966 saw revived discussion of Croatian nationalism. This movement began
among students, but by 1971 figures inside the Communist Party were circulating
proposals for the secession of Croatia. At this point Tito stepped in: offending
organizations were suppressed and several people went to jail. One of them was
Franjo Tudjman, the future President of Croatia: aged 49 in 1971, he was a Partisan
veteran, a Communist and a general, who had left the Party in the 1960s to become
an academic and a Croatian nationalist. Among his publications were indictments
of human rights violations by the party and the state, but his writings also
included defenses of the wartime Ustashe fascist regime.

These political and intellectual
currents combined with socio-economic dissatisfaction in the northern half of
the country. Economic decentralization led Slovenes and Croatians to oppose
centralized economic planning, especially expensive efforts to build factories
in Yugoslavia's backward southern regions. The northern regions prefered to
reinvest the profits of their superior industries closer to home. Croatians
and Slovenes felt that they paid the country's bills, thanks to Adriatic tourism
and industries producing goods for export, and opposed subsidizing unprofitable
factories in Serbia and Macedonia. Under the decentralized constitutional system
in place after 1974, the various regions in fact became economic rivals rather
than partners.

Serbian
dissent

Not only did Croatian separatism
flourish, but Great Serb nationalism reemerged. Although the other nationalities
believed that they were hobbled by too much Serb influence, Serbs often asserted
that the Yugoslav system placed them at a disadvantage. Laws preserving the
rights of ethnic minorities -- such as Albanians and Magyars -- tended to apply
primarily to areas within Serbia, while Serbs who lived as minorities outside
the Serbian republic proper enjoyed no special rights. Serbs also tended to
believe that the losses sustained by Serbs in the Balkan Wars and two World
Wars entitled them to assistance from their wealthier neighbors.

Tensions were particularly
strong in Kosovo, an autonomous region with mythic importance for Serbs but
a majority Albanian population. In 1981, protests about bad conditions at the
Albanian University in Kosovo led to a brutal crackdown against ethnic Albanians
by the Serbian-led police. [Tensions in Kosovo increased until they led to war
in 1999.]

Situations of this kind
fueled Serbian radicalism among intellectuals. In 1985, the Serbian Academy
of Sciences wrote a memorandum that strongly criticized Tito and the Communist
state for anti-Serb policies, noting that 30 years of Communism had left Serbia
poorer than the north. The report also condemned "genocidal" anti-Serb policies
in Kosovo, where the 10 percent Serb minority was said to be oppressed by the
Albanian majority. The Academy offered the idea of a Serb state as a solution.

The idea of a Serb state
soon was adopted by Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic was a product of the Yugoslav
Communist system: a party official, trained in the law, head of a large state-owned
gas company. In 1986, at age 45, he became head of the Serbian Communist Party
at at time when it was under serious attack by a new democratic opposition.
By making a patriotic, pro-Serbian speech in 1989 on the battle site of Kosovo,
Milosevic deprived the opposition of nationalism as a tool, and made it his
own. With massive popular support, he cracked down on the media and dissent
outside the local Party, then purged the Party of reform-oriented rivals. By
using mass rallies that verged on mob scenes, he coerced the Party apparatus
in Montenegro and Vojvodina into installing his allies as leaders, then curtailed
autonomy in Kosovo and Vojvodina.

When the period of "revolution"
came later in 1989, Milosevic took advantage of it to rename the Serbian Communist
Party and convert it into a nationalist organization. At the same time, his
use of state power prevented real alternative forces from becoming viable options
in Serbia. His centralist and pro-Serb agenda also persuaded reformers in Slovenia
and Croatia that it would be dangerous to remain part of a Yugoslav state that
might be dominated by Milosevic and a Serb majority. This was the position at
the beginning of 1990, with new leadership in place across Yugoslavia, and the
country beginning to slide into disunity and war.

Seven
periods of the Yugoslav crisis

Much reporting of events
in Yugoslavia and Bosnia falls into the "senseless violence" school of journalism.
In fact, most of the events during the fighting represented logical (if violent
and brutal) steps toward coherent goals. The war can be divided into seven periods,
each of which followed its own characteristic pattern.

Period
One (January to July, 1990):
In this period, all the ethnic elements in the country began to explore new
possibilities, often contradictory.

After the revolutions of
1989 swept Eastern Europe, a sense of new possibility entered Yugoslav political
life. All elements felt confident that they could throw off unwanted features
of Communism, but the definition of what was to be lost varied from place to
place.

In January 1990 the League
of Communists (the Yugoslav Communist Party) split along ethnic lines, and ceased
to be a unifying national force. In that same month, violent riots in Kosovo
reached new levels, with several dozen people killed. The JNA (the Yugoslav
National Army, in which the officer corps was heavily Serbian) intervened to
restore order. Because this episode led to fears that the JNA would become a
tool of Serbian interests, the effect was to move the other nationalities farther
toward secession.

In the spring of 1990,
Slovenes and Croats took concrete steps toward setting up new forms of political
power. In April, there were free elections in the two northern provinces. In
Slovenia, a Center-Right coalition won and began work on a new constitution
that claimed the right to secede from the federal state. In Croatia, Franjo
Tudjman's Croatian Democratic Union, a conservative nationalist party, took
the largest share of seats in the April election. In Serbia, on the other hand,
the results of a June 1990 referendum favored keeping a single-party state and
curbing ethnic autonomy in Kosovo and Vojvodina, the very policies that were
fueling Slovene and Croat efforts to distance themselves from Serbia.

In the first period, the
ability of the nationalities to pursue their own goals in the aftermath of the
1989 revolution led to a growing distance between the factions.

Period
Two (August 1990 to May 1991):
In this period the contradictions between competing goals moved the situation
from tension to violence.

In August 1990, minority
Serbs in the Serb-majority Krajina district of Croatia (adjacent to the border
with Bosnia) began to agitate for autonomy. They argued that if Croatia
could leave Yugoslavia, they in turn could leave Croatia. To prevent Croatian
interference in a planned referendum, local Serb militias made up of trained
army reservists set up roadblocks to isolate the Krajina region. In Serbia,
Milosevic announced that if Yugoslavia broke apart, there would have to be border
changes that would unite all ethnic Serbs in a single political entity. Serbia
also cracked down on Albanian agitation.

Such steps alarmed Slovenes
and Croats, and propelled them toward independence. The two republics organized
local militia and armed their police, despite warnings from the JNA and anxiety
among Croatia's Serbs, who recalled the use of local police by the Ustashe to
round up Serbs in 1941. In March 1991, Serbs in Croatia proclaimed an autonomous
Krajina, which was recognized by Milosevic. In clashes over control of local
police stations, the first people were killed in that area.

In the second period, the
incompatibility between Serb and Slovene-Croatian wishes became clear, and led
to violence outside of Kosovo for the first time.

Period
Three (May 1991 to February 1992):
This was the period when true open warfare began, as the Serbs resisted the
Slovene and Croatian independence movements.

In May 1991, a Croatian
was due to become the new Yugoslav president under the scheme of rotation, but
Serbia refused to accept the change. This action set aside the last chance for
a solution through constitutional means. In June, both Slovenia and Croatia
proclaimed their independence. Debates over the "legality" of such moves played
out against a background in which all sides chose to ignore inconvenient parts
of the old constitution.

To frustrate Slovene independence,
the JNA seized the customs posts on the borders of Slovenia. After fighting
between Slovene militia and the JNA, there was a stalemate. JNA units were blockaded
in their barracks, too powerful for the Slovene forces to attack, but without
access to the gasoline they needed to move. Perhaps because there were so few
Serbs in Slovenia, Serbia conducted a policy toward that state that was very
different from the policy adopted toward Croatia. Under a negotiated settlement,
the JNA units withdrew and allowed the Slovenes to secede.

In Croatia the war escalated
instead. Fighting began with guerilla warfare in Krajina between the new Croatian
armed forces, local Serb militia, and elements of the JNA stationed there. In
August 1991, Serbian regular army units began campaigns to control two strategic
areas: Vukovar and Dubrovnik. At Vukovar in Eastern Slavonia, artillery fire
drove Croatians out of the city, which was of strategic importance as a gateway
leading from Serbia to areas of Serbian population in the western parts of Bosnia
and in Krajina, and as a region that was a source of oil. Two recurring patterns
in Serbian strategy can be seen here for the first time: the use of terror to
drive away local populations ("ethnic cleansing"), and a Serbian reliance on
heavy weapons to attack urban areas, because of a shortage of infantry. The
second Serbian offensive took place on the Dalmatian coast, where Serb forces
failed to take the coastal city of Dubrovnik from Croatia. Dubrovnik is important
as a major source of tourist revenue, and is also the place where roads from
the interior reach the Adriatic Sea.

During this same period,
member states of the European Economic Community (led by Germany) recognized
Slovene and Croat independence. The world international community became involved
for the first time as well, with UN authorization for 14,000 peacekeepers and
an economic embargo against the rump of Yugoslavia: Serbia and Montenegro.

By the end of the third
period, most of the principal organized forces in the civil war were present,
including the UN, the Croats and the Serbs, while the Muslim government of Bosnia
was about to make its appearance.

Period
Four (March 1992 to December 1992):
In this period the arena of open war shifted from Croatia to Bosnia, where the
province split along ethnic lines.

In early March 1992, a
majority of Bosnians voted for independence in a plebiscite, but the voters
split along ethnic lines with many Serbs opposing such a step. Immediately after
the voting, Serbian local militia set up roadblocks that isolated Bosnia's major
cities from surrounding, Serbian-dominated rural areas. Many Serbs left cities
like Sarajevo, and a separate Bosnian Serb parliament was set up.

In April 1992, Bosnian
Serb forces began a methodical effort to seize control of as much territory
as possible, especially in the eastern part of Bosnia (which is adjacent to
Serbia), as a step toward a possible union with Serbia. Backed by JNA units,
self-proclaimed "Chetnik" gangs that included criminal elements used terror
tactics to drive Muslim villagers out of their villages. Many of those Muslims
arrived as refugees in larger cities like Zepa, Srebrenica, Tuzla and Sarajevo.
Serb units seized roads and began a siege of Sarajevo, shelling the city and
using snipers to kill civilians.

This was the period in
which "ethnic cleansing" became general, including the extensive use of rape
and the creation of concentration camps to hold Muslim men, where many were
murdered. While incidents of terror by all ethnicities have been reported in
Bosnia, by all reliable accounts Serbs were the chief offenders. The persistence
of these reports led to escalating commitment by the UN, culminating in pledges
to use force and the enlistment of NATO forces as an instrument.

Meanwhile, Serbian goals
became clear on the ground. By the end of the summer of 1992, two-thirds of
Bosnia was in Serb hands: the eastern zone near Serbia proper, a thin corridor
running east-to-west toward Croatia, and land on both sides of the Bosnian-Croatian
border around the Krajina region of Croatia. At this time, Croatian forces also
attacked and seized Muslim districts in Bosnia, leaving very little territory
except some larger cities in the hands of the Bosnian Muslim government.

While the Serbian Milosevic
regime supported much of Bosnian Serb policy, it did not control it. The Bosnian
Serbs had a parliament of their own, and new leaders like Premier Radovan Karadzic
and General Ratko Mladic. In 1992 Milosevic had to defeat domestic challenges
from the left and right. Some of his potential rivals -- extremist Chetnik politicians
-- were mysteriously murdered. In the presidential election, Milosevic defeated
Milan Panic, a US citizen, who campaigned on a peace platform and served as
Serbian prime minister for a time before his defeat in the election. Thereafter,
Milosevic was firmly in control of Serbian politics in the rump state of Yugoslavia,
but increasingly hampered by an international economic blockade and ensuing
inflation.

By the end of the fourth
period, the Serbs of Bosnia had made notable gains in territory, and the issue
became whether they would keep them, in the face of Croatian, Muslim and UN
opposition.

Period
Five (January 1993 to January 1994):
During this year, all sides in Bosnia pursued a dual strategy, balancing fighting
with negotiations on the world stage to seek maximum advantage.

Peace talks began in Geneva,
Switzerland, based on the Anglo-American Vance-Owen plan to partition Bosnia,
separate the ethnic factions, and so end the fighting. Because it pragmatically
accepted the results of Serbian aggression, the Vance-Owen plan was widely criticized
and was unacceptable to the Bosnian Muslim government. After assuming office
in January 1993, new U.S. President Bill Clinton distanced his administration
from the plan.

By this time, the Serbs
(who made up less than 40 percent of the population) controlled some 70 percent
of the land area of Bosnia. With some difficulty, Karadzic was able to persuade
the Bosnian Serb Parliament to accept several partition plans that gave Serbs
between 50 and 52 percent of the country. Pressure from rump Yugoslavia played
a role: Milosevic wanted to end the crisis, to end sanctions and curb an annual
inflation rate which soon reached 2 million percent.

The Bosnian Muslim government,
on the other hand, resisted a settlement while it pursued international favor
in the media, with some success, as Western reporters uniformly condemned Serbian
excesses. The Bosnians also gained increased UN aid. The UN agreed to send provide
food to refugees in six cities and designated them as "safe" zones not to be
attacked by Serbs. Those cities were Sarajevo, Tuzla, Bihac, Zepa, Srebrenica
and Gorazde. The Bosnian Muslims lobbied against an arms embargo imposed on
all sides that prevented them from buying heavy weapons that could offset Serb
access to JNA arsenals, although some weapons were smuggled into the country.
(The remnant JNA had become increasingly Serbian in composition.)

This fifth period of stalemate
was the calm before the storm: the next two periods were unexpectedly volatile,
given the apparent lack of progress at this time.

Period
Six (February 1994 to June 1995):
Beginning early in 1994, the stalemate began to destabilize.

In March 1994, the Croatian
and Muslim Bosnian governments agreed on guidelines for a federated Bosnia.
This freed both groups to face the Serbs: the Muslims in Bosnia, the Croatians
in Bosnia and in Krajina, which remained in revolt against the Zagreb government.
Later in the year, allied Muslim and Croat forces began small but significant
joint operations against Bosnian Serb areas.

In
February 1994, one of the most prominent attacks on civilians during the war
enraged Western observers, when an explosion killed 68 people in Sarajevo's
Markale market
place. Early reports blamed a Serbian mortar attack, and the US, the European
Union and NATO demanded that the Serbs remove artillery from around Sarajevo
or face retaliatory air strikes. Serbian and Russian observers, however, described
the explosion as a Bosnian provocation. Official UN investigators were unable
to prove either allegation. The Serbs largely complied with Western demands
around Sarajevo, but shelling of other "safe areas" continued and
was not punished. At the same time, the episode illustrated the extent to which
the Bosnian Serbs had lost the contest for world opinion.

France and the US quarreled:
the US wanted to put more pressure on the Serbs, but France was unwilling to
place at risk its peacekeepers who were on the ground. Civilian representatives
of the UN vetoed some air attacks ordered by their own commanders. When some
air strikes did take place in May 1994, the Serbs responded by taking UN peacekeepers
hostage. In the fact of such threats, the UN then caved in completely.

Generally, this sixth period
discredited the UN, and the result was new initiatives both by the Serbs
and by their enemies in Croatia and at NATO. Out of public view, both sides
prepared to take much more active measures.

Period
Seven (July to November 1995):
The summer of 1995 saw the climax of the civil war in Bosnia, as both sides
explored their options now that the UN had lost any authority to control events.

In July 1995, Serbian forces
defied the UN and suddenly overran two of the "safe areas" in eastern Bosnia:
Srebrenica and Zepa. Some of the worst "ethnic cleansing" of the war took place
at this time: up to 8,000 Muslims were massacred under the direct supervision
of Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commanding general.

It is likely that the ineffective
record of UN and Western action during 1994 led the Bosnian Serbs to expect
no Western response, but instead the opposite happened. Karadzic and Mladic
were indicted as war criminals by a UN tribunal and Britain, France and the
US began plans for a military reaction to future attacks on "safe areas." Peacekeepers
in exposed areas were withdrawn, additional forces arrived, and the UN's civilian
representatives lost the right to veto the use of force.

It also appears that the
Western states gave Croatia the green light to take back control of Krajina.
When Serb forces from Bosnia and Krajina attacked the Bihac "safe area" in extreme
western Bosnia, they were counterattacked in a joint offensive by Bosnian Muslim
and Croat forces and those of the Croatian government. Within a few days, the
Serbs lost all of Krajina and much of western Bosnia: 130,000 Serb refugees
were driven off of lands upon which their families had lived for hundreds of
years. When angry Serbs shelled Sarajevo again, killing 37 people in one incident,
NATO reacted with an unprecedented wave of air strikes against the Bosnian Serb
infrastructure. The Muslims and Croats appear to have stopped their advance
only because the West told them to do so: by then, the Croat-Muslim federation
was in control of just over half of Bosnia. When Milosevic failed to intervene
on their behalf, the Bosnian Serbs found themselves alone and vulnerable.

For the first time, all
sides now simultaneously believed that no further advantage lay in store for
them through more fighting, and for that reason all sides were willing to negotiate.
After a hiatus of 18 months, peace talks resumed and led to a treaty signed
in November 1995, which was to be enforced by 60,000 NATO troops. If this does
mark the end of the war, it will have ended with some 250,000 people killed
out of a prewar Bosnia population of 4.4 million, over half of whom have become
refugees.

[In the period since late
1995 when this lecture was written, there has been no resumption of fighting
in Bosnia. While relationships between the various ethnicities in Bosnia remain
troubled, the period of open warfare, atrocities against civilians and deep
international crisis has ended. However, similar tensions led to clashes between
the Serbian state and the Albanian population of Kosovo in 1999, and eventually
to intervention by NATO and the United States. That episode falls outside the
scope of this Web site. The U.S. State Department provides a detailed chronology
at http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/fs_kosovo_timeline.html.
For other resources, consult your local library.]

[*Some readers have questioned
my use of the term "civil war" on the grounds that the fighting was between
independent entities within a dissolving federation. It is not my intent
either to imply
or to deny claims to independence by any of the former federal units. Recent
discussions of Iraq have led to public debate on the same issue:
in "A
Matter of Definition: What Makes a Civil War, and Who Declares It So?" (The
New York Times, November 26, 2006, page 14), Edward Wong says, "The
common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the
warring
groups
must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center,
control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The
second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with
at least 100 from each side."]

This lecture is a portion
of a larger Web site, Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History (The Balkans
in the Age of Nationalism); click here to return to the Table
of Contents page. This page created on 27 November
1996; last modified 29 September 2016.